Kim Kardashian spurred some Internet ire when she wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress to the 2022 Met Gala, especially after it was revealed that she couldn’t really fit in the dress in the first place. Those concerns may have been warranted, because photographs of the iconic garment appear to show damage following the event.
Update — 6/16: Representatives of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, which in 2016 bought the dress for a record-setting $4.8 million, say that the dress remains in the same condition as it was before the Gala. “From the bottom of the Met steps, where Kim got into the dress, to the top where it was returned, the dress was in the same condition it started in,” said Ripley’s Amanda Joiner, who watched over the dress both before and after Kardashian put it on.
According to a statement from Ripley’s, an internal 2017 report said that the dress displayed several “instances of damage.” TMZ speculates that viral before-and-after photographs show the dress before it came into Ripley’s possession, but this is unconfirmed.
The dress itself is a Jean Louis design that she wore while singing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy in 1962. One source to post before-and-after photographs was The Marilyn Monroe Collection. In an image taken after Kardashian’s May 2nd Met Gala appearance, the back zipper appears stretched and crystals are missing from the garment, leaving only loose thread behind. “So much for keeping ‘the integrity of the dress,'” the account captioned the post.
Ripley’s promised that “Great care was taken to preserve this piece of pop culture history.” Kardashian was never left alone with the dress, and she only wore it for a few minutes on the red carpet before changing into a replica. Still, many criticized her decision to go forward with the outfit after she revealed that she lost 16 pounds just to fit into it. What’s more, a viral video of the star’s first fitting shows her team struggling to fit the piece over her bottom half, which she ultimately covered with a fur wrap.
Check out images of the iconic dress below. In other Kardashian news, the star continues to make headlines with her unforeseen new boyfriend, Pete Davidson.
